This entry has taken me ages to get round to as its been a busy year. The new interest in electric locomotives has necessitated the installation of catenary. I bought a few components at the Sanddown Model Rail show from the Orient Express shop's stand. This enabled me to get started. I had a visit to Adelaide recently with work so was able to pop into the Orient Express shop to buy pretty much all the DRG catenary stock they had. The catenary is fairly easy to install. Fortunately it is a
I had a few signals to install and have them all in place now and fully wired. They are all DCC controlled through the ECoS.
My old ECoS had "issues" which made it unusable so I had to get another one. This one has a colour screen so happy about that.
Much of the time recently has been checking wiring had a couple of wiress come loose and needed to bolster connections. Have been doing a bit of weathering as well on some locos. Plenty still need to get done though.
Having now recovered from six weeks away I now feel a bit of an update is on the cards. I spent most of my time in Scotland with a week in Yorkshire and a week in Berlin. Railways were very much the theme of the visit and I managed to take in most transport museums in the areas visited.
Glasgow's new transport museum was first up and was quite impressed by the architecture.
I was also rather impressed by the large South African locomotive on show. This was the one that was on
Previously I had installed a three way signal on the layout and thought I'd show you how this comes up on the ECoS screen as it's a bit more interesting than the regular two position ones. This is the one to the top right of the screen. When you press it first it opens up to show three signal positions which you can choose from. Installing one of these signals uses two outputs from your point decoder. Once wired up it works quite well though.
Here's the signal on the layout on the ri
This blog entry follows on from the previous one in continuing with the fitting of the platforms.
I had to etch them and paint the edges and create the slot where the underpass entry will be fitted later.
All the other station platform paraphernalia can be fitted later too.
Once the platform shape had been established I had to check for smooth running of pretty much all my stock with the tightest fit possible. I had got pretty close but my Kriegslok seemed to catch more than others and
There's been a few things happening of late.
I started off by correcting the end of street scene from last entry.
I used one the vertical Bavarian banners to conceal the top join.
It now blends in better than it did.
The join being far better than before.
Not sure how I'm going to do the other side of the building to the right though. Still thinking about that.
I started installing the Veissmann signals I had bought previously to see how they went with digital co
Time for a bit of an update on what's been happening on the layout.
First up I had to extend the backdrop as it petered out in the middle of a street. The only option was the same backdrop I used before but I joined it up on the second sheet as the colour on the first was too light and there was a very obvious join. This doesn't look too bad. Merges fairly well. This concludes the backdrops for the Bavarian layout as it is now wrapped all around.
Track laying was concluded a couple
I had been looking into this new Roco cab camera that is on their new E103 and was quite interested in that as it would be a perspective on the layout you normally wouldn't get to see. While I was thinking about it it occurred to me that Icould always put my handycam on the back of a flat in the meantime to see what it would look like from that perspective. Here's couple of test videos of the layout from this trial.
http://youtu.be/mo9N1HjDsuc
It's amazing how much you notice on film t
I decided I had to do something about the top left, or north west corner of the layout as it remained bare and I needed to work from the outside in..
Once I get this part finished I can then get on with completing the trackwork for the service yards.
To this end I carried on from where I left off before.
I had got as far as plastering the area and applying a coat of paint to seal it.
Next I used the grassmaster on it to get it to look like this.
Some small
I have been doing things but they're probably not all that noticeable. I had new lights installed in the roof which has really brightened the room up no end. The old lights were those single bulb enegry saver ones which didn't produce much light. I've now added a couple of strip lights which I salvaged from the old garage.
Makes things a lot better to see and photograph although I'm starting to notice some pictures are washed out if I photograph too close to the light.
I tend to hav
This entry follows on from the previous one in the main. I installed the walling along the side of the shuttle lines.
While this is off the shelf stuff it is quite good and looks ok. I've cut it to shape where required and applied various washes for effect.
I've also extended the road down the length of most of the wall.I'll continue this on later when I'm working down the other end of the layout.
This is one end of the shuttle line. I've finished off ballasting and inst
About the time of my last entry I got a whole load of kits to build to build up my town scene which will occupy the north east corner of the layout. I got a few other items too so this entry should hopefully be more visually stimulating than the last entry's track fest. The plan is to have several layers of buildings to this to give the impression of a big city's old quarter. This will be bound by two main roads which will merge round about where the station starts and run along behind the st
Apologies in advance this entry's a bit boring I'm afraid. I've been focussing on my track and trying to get it all laid. I got another three points and motors which I've installed down the front of the layout. These were intended for the service yard but the points were far too big for the area I have so I used them for more express train platform access. I have also installed the point switching kits included with the points.
I've stained the track and painted the rails on all the tr
This part is the bit I'd been dreading most of the entire layout. The issue is that I needed two shuttle lines right at the back of the layout next to the backboards, and, I needed to install the backboards after I had installed a fair bit of track. I had a fair idea of how I was going to do this and had spent a fair bit of time thinking about it so off I went to Bunnings (local equivelant of Homebase or MFI) to get all the materials.
First part was to assemble the backboards. There were
Well, have done a fair bit more but it doesn't really look it. Most of what I have done has been rewiring and point instalation.
I got four more points and motors installed. Went to buy some more Tillig flexi track from the Orient Express stand at the Caulfield show when I was there the other week but they had forgotten to bring the flexi track with them. Ended up buying some points and motors instead. Have them all installed and connected up now. There we go; that's 300 bucks there. Do
It had been a while since I've been working on my layout I've forgotten what I needed to get and what I already have. I did have some of this information on spreadsheets but am not able to find them either now. For example, I could have swore that I had 4 Lenz LS 150's (point decoders); 1 that I'd broken and 3 that worked. Couldn't find the third working one so ordered another. Lo and behold, I'd just bought another one when I came across the missing one the following day! Inevitable really.
I had a bit of a hold up with construction of this layout back when I was building it. Funding had become an issue as we just had our new house built and needed to buy lots of stuff for the house, create gardens, driveways paths etc. Then my wife got sick and was unable to work for a year however all back on track now and work on the layout had now resumed.
There's a few things happening; lots of kit building for the city scene and railway yards, track laying, point instalation, electron
I got round to finishing off the base boards. The track plan isn't really finalised and I have to do the initial tracklaying to see what will work. The layout, or rather the track I'm laying, is for the Bavarian layout. The plan is that this layout will occupy the main base boards as depicted below. There will be an eight track station with a city scene behind . Still deciding on whether turntable is feasible or not.
These are the tracks that go round the edge of the room. Th
We knocked our house down and built a new bigger better one and out of that I got a bigger garage with a bigger workbench, a room for computers and models and, best of all, a designated layout room inside the house which has air con and heating. No more of that layout in the garage nonsense. We moved in a couple of months ago and the dust has started to settle on the sorting the house out. As my time has freed up from house stuff my focus has shifted back to hobbies so I have started buildin
